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Bell & Ross Steps Back In Time With New Vintage Collection

At this year's Baselworld fair the resurgence of vintage styles and return to classic values was more evident than ever, nowhere more so than in the new collection from Bell & Ross. Officially unveiled at the show, the stunning new Vintage collection from B&R will eventually replace the original Vintage (and Geneva) lines. These funky looking new pieces strive to replicate the unique look of professional timepieces of four to six decades ago whilst at the same time infusing them with instantly recognizable modern Bell & Ross traits.

Brand New Vintage
Prior to the advent of the BR Instruments, Bell & Ross watches were more or less split into two categories: Vintage and Professional. While many people were not aware of the French brand before the conspicuous square BR-01 came to be, their original creations attracted a strong following thanks to their high quality and clean designs and served as a base for Bell & Ross' important expansion into the BR niche.

The new Bell & Ross BR Vintage watches offer a design that looks authentically like a military watch manufactured between the forties and sixties. The difference is in the quality of the materials and the manufacturing. The domed crystal is a very subtle, yet striking example of a quality upgrade. Before the Eighties, synthetic sapphire was not used in watchmaking. Acrylic plastic was used instead, as it is very easy to work with and does not shatter like glass.

Because of its structural weakness, the acrylic crystals were often domed or raised in order to protect the watch from impact, but were prone to crack in the process. Scratching a plastic crystal is also very easy to do. Today sapphire has become the standard for luxury watches and Bell & Ross devised a way to sculpt the extremely hard corundum (the mineral name for sapphire) into the elevated shapes of the past. The sapphire crystal's irregular form is both esthetically pleasing and structurally strong thanks to its thickness and shape.

Classic Style
Under the nostalgic, domed crystal lies a dial that is a key element in defining the BR Vintage models as Bell & Ross watches. A side-by-side comparison between the BR V123 Heritage and BR-03 92 Heritage (seen at the end of the video posted below) shows this very clearly.

The beige numeral and index hour markers and bold hands are a direct product of the company's design philosophy – the same philosophy that links every Bell & Ross watch to the clean, highly legible design of professional instruments.

Bell & Ross design principles are also captured on the case. The flat, strong bezel and black "carbon finish" mirror those on the square BR timepieces. The strap that was conceived for the Vintage BR is thicker and is punched with rectangular holes giving the new models an even more distinct character.

The movements, while very important, don't bring much new to the table. The BR Vintage models are equipped with the same Swiss, automatic movements that are already in use in other Bell & Ross watches. As before, "123″ will identify an automatic three-hand configuration with small seconds and date window at six o'clock, and "126″ denominates an self-winding chronograph with date at four thirty.

The Bell & Ross BR Vintage collections draw inspiration from professional watches of the past, the distinct design principles of the manufacturer, modern advances in watchmaking, and the original Bell & Ross Vintage collections that helped elevate the company to the level of a world class brand in the first place.

The Final Word
The BR Vintage 123 and 126 Heritage shown in the video on www.bellross.com are the flagship pieces for the new collections. They capture the vintage style especially well thanks to beige hands and markers. For years companies have been reviving styles of the past. Fender makes "vintaged" Relic Guitars, the Dodge Charger and Chevy Camaro have been remodelled to reflect their origins in more detail.

Whether it be by reissuing vintage models or imitating the effects of time with the use of beige markers and hands to emulate the discoloring of white tritium over time, the watch industry itself has taken notice: the products that so many of the world's affluent consumers enjoyed their youth with are making their way back

About the Author

Joyce is now doing some collection work about luxurious handbags and watches. If you share the same interest with her, please visit her website http://www.hotefashion.com, where you never get disappointed.

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